An Open Letter to EON Productions

 To Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson:

Can we have a little talk about the future of OO7? I know I'm a cranky old man who technically isn't the target audience for movies anymore, but I've been a Bond fan for most of my life. I've seriously watched the movies for almost 45 years and I'm only 50. I'm not the only old Bond fan out there. You'd probably be surprised at the number of us old heads there are who still go to these movies. I have one friend older than me who only goes to the movies when it's a new Bond film. So, yeah, there's quite a number of us out there.

So you've done your Daniel Craig miniseries of Bond movies. All in all, Craig was plenty good as Bond. A couple of the movies were really terrific, too. Casino Royale was the best, and oddly the one that most felt like old school Bond. Probably because it was actually based on an Ian Fleming book. Anyhow, Craig is done. You brought an end to the story. I wasn't initially happy with the ending, but I'll get over it. I'll give it another chance and end up buying the Blu Ray when it comes out. I buy all the Bonds, even the ones I initially don't like, and give them a second chance. But now that the Craig run is over, you're going to reboot the series again. So let's talk about this for a moment.

First off, don't do like Spider-Man or Batman and have another origin story. Bond doesn't need an origin story. Casino Royale didn't need to be an origin story. Just because it was the first book doesn't mean it was an origin. Bond in the book was already fully formed. Bond in the Dr. No movie is also fully formed. He can just be James Bond without an origin. Actually, no origin makes him more mysterious and interesting. So let him just Be James Bond. He drinks vodka matinis shaken not stirred, he drives fast cars, he has a license to kill, the whole nine yards.

Second, can we please please please drop the "this time it's personal" angle? The character existed for 27 years before doing a personal story. The problem is, every film has been personal since then. Simply have a villain out to take over or destroy the world like OG Blofeld, Goldfinger, Largo, etc. He has a large henchman like Oddjob or Jaws who gives Bond a hard time. Bond is literally the only person in the world who can stop the villain. He meets some women with hilariously inappropriate names like Pussy Galore or Holly Goodhead along the way. Maybe even give him some crazy gadgets. Certainly give him some crazy stunts.

I'm talking about the Goldfinger formula. The formula that Cubby Broccoli followed for years. I know, I know. Some crazy SJW is going to scream that you can't do Goldfinger anymore. Yes, you can. Know why? Because people still love Goldfinger. People will still go see Goldfinger and enjoy it. Revival showings of that movie and Thunderball are always popular. Yes, you're going to have an SJW or two howling on the internet, but they won't keep the real fans away.

You almost had the Goldfinger formula right in Spectre. It had all the elements up until "James, I am your brother". Take that goofy twist out and you've got a classic Bond. And guess what? Spectre is actually a pretty damn good entry in the series. I liked Christoph Waltz. I loved Bautista. I just hated the unnecessary twist.

By the way, you might consider dumping Purvis and Wade: Richard Maibum they aren't. I know that you try to be loyal, but all these guys do is borrow material from the earlier films without doing it justice. It's one thing to follow a formula, it's another thing to just keep recreating scenes like a cosplayer. And get a director who is more respectful of the legacy of the series than Cary Fukunaga. I mean, seriously, you've had American directors like Spielberg, Scorcesse and Taranatino ask you to do a Bond film--guys who genuinely love the series--but you let the first American director be a guy who disses Sean Connery's Bond as a rapist? Do better, guys.

Bond is a legacy. He's gone longer than any other movie character except for Godzilla. And his movies have been a heck of a lot better than Godzilla. Live up to that legacy. You Can do this: I've seen it. Goldeneye is wonderful. Casino Royale is wonderful. Spectre is almost wonderful.

By the way, can we pick up the pace of release again? Cubby got them out basically every other year. Roger Moore did 7 films in 12 years. Craig did 5 in 15. Four to six years between movies is a LONG time. Even if you can't do every two years like Cubby did, at least go for every three. 

One more thing: whatever else you do, don't reboot the series again when the next guy leaves in two-five movies. One thing Cubby did was make it all one guy. All one guy in a floating timeline works. It worked for 40 years. It can work again.

What Happened to OO7? A Look Back at the Craig Era.

Before we get started, I will warn you that there's major spoilers about No Time to Die in this posting. So if you haven't seen it, you might want to come back to this after seeing it. I'll also warn that this is the rant of someone who might just be a cranky old white dude.

I've been a fan of the James Bond series since I was seven. My first film was The Spy Who Loved Me. I had the View Master reels for Moonraker. I owned and read and re-read the comic book for For Your Eyes Only so much, it basically disintegrated. My family wouldn't take me to the movies in the theater but I watched them on TV. When we got our first VCR in 1984, I started renting all the films. Heck, I would do double features on a Saturday night as a teen. My first one in the theaters was A View to a Kill, which I loved. The only one after that I missed in the movies was License to Kill. I've seen all of them on opening day since Goldeneye. And that includes No Time to Die, which I saw last night in 3D. I've waited all these years for a 3D Bond film. I couldn't be more excited for a movie. And yet, after seeing it, I'm kinda pissed off right about now.

Nothing to do with the 3D, by the way, which was serviceable and about what I'd expect from the modern 3D era. Nice depth, a couple of mild pop-outs.

The movie itself is what angers me. As I sit here and look back on the Craig era, I can't help but feel insulted.

Maybe it's because director Cary Joji Fukanaga denigrated the prior films in an infamous interview with the Hollywood Reporter, calling Connery's Bond a rapist. It seems to me that it's in poor taste to promote your movie by tearing down other films.

Maybe it's because in retrospect, the entire Craig era seems like a slap in the face to fans of the series.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm a cranky old white dude.

Maybe it's the fact that they fucking kill James Bond.

Look, I'll cop to the whole cranky old man thing. I AM, in fact, a cranky old man and I know it. But killing James Bond is just stupid. Denigrating the older films to make yourself look woke is stupid. Insulting the fans repeatedly is stupid. And the Craig films have, much like the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, done just that.

Think about the Sequel Trilogy. Forget the whole wokeness argument that gets brought up. I don't mind Rey, Finn, and Poe. I don't mind diversity. I actually kind of like those three characters. But the entire Sequel Trilogy seemed to be set up to kill off the characters I and other Original Trilogy fans grew up on. And so they did, one film at a time. It didn't occur to me watching them in the theaters what the filmmakers were doing, but when I watched all 11 Star Wars films in story order last year, I realized that yeah, the Sequel Trilogy was about killing off beloved characters and in a sense, giving OT fans the middle finger. Needless to say, I am in no rush to rewatch the Sequel Trilogy.

The Craig era kind of seems to have been set up the same way. It's not obvious in his first film, Casino Royale. In fact, that film seems closest to old school Bond out of the five. Yes, there's no gadgets in it. Yes, the idea that this is a reboot but Judi Dench is still M is kind of goofy. Yes, Bond at one point growls about not caring if his Martini is shaken not stirred. But the film in general comes off like one of the older Bond films, specifically the more grounded ones like On Her Majesty's Secret Service or For Your Eyes Only. Possibly because it's a reasonably faithful adaption of the novel. I didn't care for the change in game from Baccarat to Texas Hold 'Em, but I also recognized that it was simply a case of Bond following and adapting to the trends of popularity as he frequently did.

But yes, Casino Royale was a pretty faithful adaption, up to and including the death of Vesper. I remember sitting in the theater in 2006 and being impressed that they did the second half of the novel. The 1954 TV version with Barry Nelson did a reasonable adaptation of the first half, so seeing them cover the whole book in the Craig version impressed me. Unfortunately, killing Vesper then seemed to set the tone for the rest of Craig's run.

Quantum of Solace followed and it's a bottom five Bond, right down there with the likes of Never Say Never Again (I know, I know--it's not an official Bond film) and Die Another Day. A large part of this is the way the thing is shot. It's shot like a Christopher Nolan Batman movie with rapid cuts that make it impossible to know who is doing what to whom. That works for Nolan's Batman. It does not work for Bond. Add in an awful villain plot--stealing the water supply--and the killing of Giancarlo Giannini's Mathis and you have a film that quickly goes south. To add insult to injury, you could tell who all the new Bond fans were by how they kept talking about how innovative and original the movie was while I sat there counting all the scenes stolen from earlier films.

Next up was Skyfall. A lot of people love Skyfall. I like it quite a bit myself. But two things do bother me. First up is Bond having mommy issues involving M. That seemed a little much. Second is the film's direct slap in the face: the new Q making snide comments about exploding pens. There might be people who think the gadgets in the older Bond films are silly, but those gadgets are part of the fun of the older films thank you very much. And by the way, Goldeneye is a better Bond film. Fight me.

Skyfall ended with the promise that old school Bond was finally coming. The last scene where Craig walks in to the new M's office set the next film up to finally take us back to the glory days. Spectre started really delivering on that promise, too. At least it did up until the dumb twist of Blofeld saying "James, I am your brother". No, no, no, no. Ten hundred billion times no. Talk about unnecessary! I wanted to bang my head into a wall when that happened. Seriously, cut that twist out and Spectre fits nicely with the Connery and Moore films. But we had to continue the trend of "this time it's personal" that the Bond series has beaten into the ground since License to Kill.

And now we have No Time to Die. A movie Bond fans have waited patiently for six years for. The last time there was a six year gap was between License to Kill and Goldeneye and we had a switch in Bonds then. Six years waiting for Daniel Craig's last film and the first Bond in 3D.

It starts promisingly. The opening action scene is pretty good and the machine guns in the headlights is a nice nod to the earlier films. There's a wonderful sequence in Cuba with a hilarious performance by Ana De Armas as a CIA agent with three weeks training who ends up totally kicking ass. It's the type of scene you want in a Bond movie and I loved it. I wish she had stuck around for the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, right after she's done, they kill off Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright). Why? Just why? I liked Wright's take on Leiter. And hell, outside of David Hedison, he's the only guy to play the character more than once. Killing him off does nothing but ensure that if the character ever does return to the series, it's a different actor again. The film continues to go south from there.

What the movie wants to do is remake OHMSS. What Rami Malek's Safin is up to is not terribly different from Telly Savalas's Blofeld in the earlier movie--a plan to poison the world. And there's plenty of cues to the earlier film since music from it is used repeatedly in this one. Unfortunately, this movie isn't OHMSS. Safin is not Blofeld, not even Savalas's take on the character, which wasn't up to Donald Pleasance's take. Malek might have made for a decent Freddie Mercury, but he's definitely one of the weaker Bond villains, especially after Christoph Waltz's fantastic Blofeld (stupid twist notwithstanding). I like Lea Seydoux's Madeline Swann enough, but she's no Diana Rigg. And one thing can be said for George Lazenby's Bond is that there's at least a sense of humor. Craig is still too dour in the film. In fact, outside of Casino Royale, Craig hasn't really been all that funny as Bond at all.

But the film commits the ultimate sin. Whereas OHMSS killed Bond girl Tracy, this film actually kills James Bond. Like the earlier question about Leiter, the question here is Why? Because Craig is leaving the series? Five other actors left the series before him without being killed off. Bond isn't a doomed noir character, destined to die. He's James Bond, who runs around and saves the world. He's a fantasy character, kind of a superhero. I often wonder if the people who made these last four Bond movies actually bothered to watch any Bond movies.

Here's the problem with what this movie has done: it forces another reboot of the series. We already had one reboot with Casino Royale. So now we have to have another. Does this mean a new M, Q, and Moneypenny? I kind of  liked the current line up, but it would make little sense for them to be in the next film considering the ending of this one. Certainly we're going to need a new Leiter.

And please, none of that stupid fan theory that Bond is a codename. The first 20 films made it very clear he's the same guy. Is it going to be like Spider-Man or Batman where there's a reboot every time the actor changes? The genius of Bond is that didn't happen. It was the same guy for 20 films and 5 actors. The older films make it a point to let it be known that it IS the same guy. Do we really need a full reboot every time there's a new Bond actor now when we didn't?

I admit that when I first saw it, I didn't care much for OHMSS. In my defense, I was 14, I was used to Moore and Connery and didn't know what to make of Lazenby, and I didn't care for the killing of Tracy. But I grew to appreciate it as I got older. Maybe I'll grow to appreciate No Time to Die. In some respects, its better than QOS, but that's a low bar. There's very few Bond movies that aren't better than QOS.  I may look more favorably on it if they get back to the business of James Bond saves the world and not reboot every few years. I Want to like this film. I want to like all the Craig films. But right now I feel like writers, producers, and especially the directors have given me and fans like me who grew up loving Connery and Moore the middle finger.

I don't like that. I don't like it one bit.

Silent Madness (1984)

 

Silent Madness was one of those movies that just had a bad sense of timing all around. It came out too late in the 80s slasher craze to make an impression. By the time it was released in 1984, there had already been 3 sequels to Friday the 13th, two to Halloween, and innumerable knock-offs with such titles as My Bloody Valentine, Prom Night, Terror Train, Happy Birthday to Me, and so on. It also came out the year after 3D's big year so nobody was showing 3D movies at that time. It also came out right at the same time as Nightmare on Elm Street, which just totally bumped it out of theatres. As such, very few people saw it as it was originally intended. It didn't help the movie any that it doesn't really do anything that any other film in the genre does. In a bizarre way, it's a mash up between Halloween and the first Friday the 13th. 

The movie starts at Cresthaven Mental Hospital, somewhere in Manhattan. Cresthaven is overcrowded and understaffed, so a couple of incompetent doctors decide to release people back into society that they figure aren't a danger. Due to an absurd clerical error, one Howard Johns, a dangerous psychotic, is released instead of a simpleton named John Howard. Fearless Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) tumbles to this and tries to warn the upper management. They brush her off and claim that Johns is actually dead. Meanwhile, Johns somehow manages to get back to his old stomping grounds, Barrington School For Girls. See, Johns was the janitor there 20 years ago when he snapped and killed a bunch of sorority girls with a nail gun. How exactly Johns gets back to the college is never explained especially when we're told the school is over three hours away from the hospital. No matter. He's back and killing a new batch of sorority girls, some of whom don't even get names. Gilmore takes a weekend off and goes back to the school to track Johns down. The hospital decides to cover up and sends two demented orderlies after both Gilmore and Johns. 

Did you follow all of that? No. Doesn't matter. With a film like this you just tend to go along for the ride and enjoy the kills. Even when they're done with a hilarious cartoon ax.

The most creative thing the movie seems to have done is had then 34 year old Montgomery playing the film's Final Girl and not one of the teenagers. Montgomery does what she can with this, but while she seems to be trying to give a performance, Viveca Lindfors as the House Mom and Sidney Lassick as the Sheriff decide to say "to heck with it" and go wildly over the top. As do the insane orderlies. In fact, Montgomery seems to be the only one in the film not overacting!

At the end of the day this is your standard issue stalk and slash. The victims barely have names let alone personalities and the killer is the usual mute madman. Gore hounds will be a little disappointed that a lot of the admittedly inventive kills cut away before getting too gory and there's very little nudity for this type of thing. Is it better than it's kissing cousin Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3D? Maybe. The characters act a little less stupid. Well, most of them. The orderlies aren't particularly bright and neither is Lassick's sheriff. Some of the actors are a little better than in the 1982 slasher but that's a pretty low bar to be honest. Bizarrely, there's not one night scene anywhere in the movie. The only other slasher film that I can think of anything like that is the miserable 1997 3D cheapie Camp Blood, a movie so bad it makes this one look like Citizen Kane.

All things considered, I kinda like this movie. No, it's not very good. As I've pointed out before, none of the 80s 3D movies are any good, but this one is one of the slightly better ones. It's not something I'd watch every month or even every year, but I can see myself returning to it from time to time if only to get a laugh. 

Silent Madness came and went in October of 1984, overshadowed by Nightmare on Elm Street. It had a VHS release and a poor bootleg 3D version that wasn't even in the full widescreen. It's long been neglected and mostly forgotten except for by die hard slasher fans and 3D fans. Vinegar Syndrome and the 3D Film Archive decided somewhere along the way that Silent Madness was worth saving and now there's a beautiful 3D Blu Ray of it available. The Blu Ray includes 3 versions of the film: a 3D Blu Ray version requiring the proper TV and Blu Ray player, a 2D version (of course) and an anaglyphic (red/cyan) version that is probably the best anaglyphic video presentation I've ever seen. There's also a mess of extras on it including a fairly interesting documentary on the making of the movie and the original sizzle reel done for the movie.

If you're a 3D completist, you obviously need this disc. The 3D Film Archive worked their usual magic on it and as such it looks a lot better than most of the other 80s 3D films that have gotten a 3D Blu Ray release--Friday the 13th Part 3 included. The inclusion of the anaglyph version allows a wider audience to watch the movie in 3D. As I said, it's a much better anaglyph version than anything I've seen over the last 40 years of watching these things. Supposedly the 3D Film Archive will be doing this more and more on future releases.

I met Belinda Montgomery a few years ago at a Chiller Theatre convention and admitted to her that I liked her in a movie that I knew was a stupid movie. When she asked which one, I mentioned this one. She rolled her eyes and said "That is a stupid movie!"

Yes, Ms. Montgomery, it really is. But I kinda get a kick out of it.

Friday the 13th Part 3 3D (1982)

Friday the 13th Part 3 was the first major 3D movie of the 1980s. I, of course, am using the term major in a rather loose sense. But it was bigger budgeted than the two that preceded it--1981's Comin' At Ya! and the 1982 Demi Moore sci-fi horror flick Parasite--and it was the first one to be released by a major studio. It was also the first major hit in 3D in the 1980s. So in a way, it shares those things with 1953's House of Wax. However, that's where the similarities end.

The first of the Part 3 in 3D movies of the era, Friday the 13th Part 3 is generally considered the best of the 3D movies of the 80s. It's also the film that gave Jason his iconic hockey mask (he had a flour sack over his head in the previous film). Having finally watched it in 3D, I will say that the 3D is quite spectacular. The movie, on the other hand, is quite craptacular. I mean, this is the movie Scream referenced with the joke about running up the stairs instead of out the front door. It literally happens in the movie.

I see dead people

The opening five minutes (in 2D) are the end of the previous film. After burying a machete in Jason's arm, that film's final girl leaves. Jason, of course, is not dead, and he promptly gets up and walks off the wound. He heads over to a general store owned by an annoying couple named Harold and Edna, steals some clothes from them and murders them after a set up that feels like it takes forever.

Meantime, another bunch of dumb teens are getting together to go have a quiet weekend in the woods. They are Chris (Dana Kimmel), who is suffering PTSD from an encounter with Jason two years earlier, stoners Chuck and Chili, pregnant Debbie and her show-off boyfriend Andy, annoying prankster Shelly, and his reluctant date Vera. At the cabin they meet up with Chris's horny boyfriend Rick, who can't understand that she doesn't want to have sex due to what happened to her previously. None of these characters except for Final Girl Chris have any personality. They exist merely to be killed off by Jason. Shelly and Vera run afoul of a trio of bikers in a convenience store, who also have no personality but are there to also add to the body count. Death by meat clever, knitting needle, pitchfork, machete, fire poker, electrocution, spear gun, knife, and having one's eyeball popped out of their head ensues. 

The Lucky One

I get that you shouldn't expect too much from a film like this, but it would be nice if there was something to recommend it beyond the 3D. It's my understanding that this is one of the better entries in this series and all I can say about that is that I can't begin to imagine what the lesser entries are like. Most of the acting is non-existent, the characters are just tropes, and frankly, the movie isn't even scary. There's no real suspense to it. The big slaughter happens an hour into the film and is done with in about 10 minutes of screen time. I also understand that the gore effects were tamed to avoid trouble with the MPAA and there's very little nudity in it, too, which I always heard was a big part of these movies.

Instead director Steve Miner put all his eggs in the 3D basket with this one. Like most of the 80s crop of 3D movies, Friday the 13th Part 3 is more interested in what it can throw out of the screen than it is in telling a story. All manner of objects fly towards the audience, and not just implements of death from our hockey masked madman. Wallets, weed joints, popcorn, juggling fruit, and a yoyo coming flying our way along with the fire poker, spear gun, pitchfork, knives, and eyeballs. Some of the effects are pretty impressive while others are just plain stupid. For almost 40 years I heard about the legendary eyeball effect when Rick's head is crushed. Imagine my disappointment at how silly it looked when I finally saw it.

Come on, give me a ride, babe!

Despite the visual assault on the audience, the 3D is surprisingly well shot for this era. I don't know if Shout Factory made alignment corrections or it always looked like this, but the movie doesn't hurt one's eyeballs in quite the same way some of it's contemporaries like Comin' At Ya! do. 3D movies of the 80s had a bad habit of getting their gimmick shots too close to the camera, which made them physically uncomfortable to watch. Though there are some gimmick shots that come way out of the screen in this one, they don't reach the point of ripping your eyeballs out of your head watching them. 

As I've said before, none of the 80s 3D movies are what anyone would call good movies. In 3D they are sometimes fun and that goes for this film, too. I'd never watch it in 2D, though. I suppose if you're going to pick just one 3D movie from the 80s to watch, this is probably the one (though I'm partial to Jaws 3-D myself). Just don't expect anything as good as House of Wax.

3-D Thursday: Revenge of the Creature (1955)

There's several notable things about 1955's Revenge of the Creature: it was the last 3-D movie of the 1950s, the first 3-D sequel to a 3-D movie, the first 3-D movie shown in 3-D on non-cable broadcast, and personally speaking, the first 3-D movie I ever saw.  It was in May of 1982 and it was an anaglyphic broadcast, the first in the Philadelphia region. Though it really didn't work at all, my 11 year old brain was convinced it did. Mercifully, Universal and the 3D Film Archive restored the film and have released it on 3D Blu Ray which works beautifully.

Revenge picks up a year after the original Creature From the Black Lagoon. The Gill Man is still hanging out in the Amazon. Ocean Harbor Oceanarium sends George Johnson (Robert B Williams) and Joe Hayes (John Bromfield) to capture the Gill Man for scientific study. They enlist Lucas (Nestor Paiva), the boat captain from the first film, to take them to the Lagoon. After a near fatal encounter with the Creature, they manage to capture him and take him back to Florida. Once there, he's studied by Animal Psychologist Clete Ferguson (John Agar) and Ichthyology student Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson). He falls for Helen but gets sick of being hit with bull prods so he eventually escapes, wrecking havoc and killing Joe.  His downfall comes when he kidnaps Helen from a seafood house.

Revenge is not quite as good as it's original. The first half has too many comedy bits in it. First there's Lucas, but he's not too much and anyway, I always liked his character. Then we get some humor with a chimp followed by Clint Eastwood in his first role as a dumb lab tech with a rat in his pocket. It's neat to see Eastwood when he was so young, but the scene is disposable. Then we get Flippy the educated Porpoise who serves no purpose to the film outside of filler. Revenge was shot at Marineland in Florida and much like Jaws 3-D acts as a bit of an infomercial for Sea World, so does Revenge for Marineland. Mercifully the second half does away with Flippy and gives us some good Creature chaos with the Gill Man flipping over cars and tossing around college students like they're frisbees. There's also a few callbacks to the original in the second half. If the first half had been as strong as the second, this would have been fully as great as the original Creature. Unfortunately, the filler makes it a lesser entry.

The cast is good, though not quite up to the casting for the first film. John Agar did a bunch of these things back in the 1950s. This might be his best film. Lori Nelson is attractive enough and you can argue if her or Julia Adams is sexier. The scene in the motel room where she gets ready for a shower is surprisingly sexy for the 50s and predates Janet Leigh's ill-fated shower in Psycho by five years. But the triangle between Agar and Bromfield for her affections doesn't quite have the tension that existed between Richard Carlson and Richard Denning in the original. Paiva and Creature actor Rico Browning are the only two major actors to return from the original. Paiva is great as usual and gets the one genuinely funny line in the film when he says "I hope you're not going to blow up my boat, Mr. Johnson. Like my wife, she's not much but she's all I got". Browning, by the way, is the only actor to appear in all three films. He later assistant directed the underwater sequences in Thunderball. This was also the fourth and final 3-D film directed by Jack Arnold. Arnold held the record for directing the most theatrical 3-D films until Robert Rodriguez did five in the current era.

For decades, most people who got to see this in 3D only got to see it in anaglyphic format, whether it was anaglyphic on TV or 16mm. The 16mm print looked better than the TV print, of course, but seeing it as it was originally intended is an eye opener. The 3D Film Archive did a gorgeous job on this. The 3D is absolutely perfect here. Shots that were in reverse 3D for decades have been corrected and the alignment has been corrected shot by shot. It actually looks better on 3D Blu than the original film. The 3D version is included in the Creature Legacy Collection Blu Ray Set. There was some controversy as Universal accidentally released the 3D version in a Side By Side format as opposed to 3D Blu Ray format, but that's been corrected and the new version looks great. The depth is outstanding and the pop-outs memorable, especially when Agar hits the audience with the bull prod, the one effect that worked in the anaglyphic TV version.

One of the complaints about the film is that taking the Creature out of the Amazon removes much of the terror and mystery of the first film. This isn't totally incorrect though I still think the filler in the first half is what really drags the film down. When it's trying to be suspenseful and scary, it works wonderfully. The opening in the Amazon and the Creature's rampage when he escapes from his captivity are marvelous. The motel room scene is pretty creepy, too. All in all, it's at least half a worthy sequel that just slightly misses the mark. But thankfully we can see it the way it was meant to be seen, since this works much better in it's 3-D format than 2-D.

Why 3-D Isn't As Dead As You Think

Once again, another source, Cheddar News on YouTube, has proclaimed the Final Death of 3-D. Of course, they've done so with a ton of misinformation. What's particularly sad about this is the attempt to educate us about 3-D while knowing nothing about it. So let's go through this once again: 3-D is not as dead as you think or the haters want. Sorry to disappoint the haters.

Let's talk a little about the history for 3-D for a moment. The earliest 3-D experiments date back to at least 1915 with the first feature in 3-D being in 1922. The Cheddar News video does correctly attribute these to being in the anaglyphic (red/cyan) format. There was a mini-boom in the 20s, mostly shorts with a couple of features. Why did it go away in the 20s? I would think mostly because the big experimentation was for sound. Sound and the Great Depression put a kibosh on a number of film experiments at the time, including Widescreen.

During the 1930s, polarized 3-D was being developed. One of the earliest polarized films was shown at the 1939 World's Fair in NY, a stop motion film called In Tune With Tomorrow. It was remade the following year in color as New Dimensions. The shorts were done in dual strip polarized 3-D. According to Cheddar, polarized glasses as yellow and brown as opposed to red and blue. What this proves is that the person doing the video hasn't actually seen any 3-D movies, especially polarized ones. Polarized glasses are clear and made of polarizing filters that are at a 90 degree angle to one another. Yellow and brown indeed.

World War II put a hold on further 3-D experimentation until the 1950s. And frankly, 3-D has pretty much been with us in one way or another ever since. Don't believe me? Let's look at the evidence.

It's generally accepted that Bwana Devil kicked off 3-D in the 1950s, but you can actually take it back a year to the Festival of Britain in 1951. A number of 3-D shorts were shot and shown there and almost all of them ended up in America in early 1953 after the success of Bwana Devil. Bwana Devil and 99% of all the 3D movies of the 50s were done in dual strip polarized 3-D. There were a couple of part 3D Burlesque features in anaglyph, but the mainstream stuff was all polarized. How does dual strip polarized 3-D work? It's shot using two cameras, one for each eye. It's then projected through two projectors. The two projectors have to be in perfect synchronization. The screen has to be an actual silver screen to reflect the light back. And the polarizing filters that the image passes through on the projector have to be changed every few days. They also have to be clean of smudges and fingerprints, as do the glasses. In short, projection of dual strip 3-D was a very precise science and if just one thing went wrong, the whole presentation would blow up.

Naturally, projectionists didn't care to be that precise. If they couldn't get it to sync up right away, they'd just let it go. Even one frame out of sync can lead to headaches and nausea. There reports of film being a full 24 frames--one full second--out of sync. To give you an idea of what that might look like, picture watching House of Wax and your left eye sees a medium shot of Vincent Price and your right eye sees a two shot of Price and Charles Bronson. The theater owners would cheap out as well, painting the screen instead of installing a proper silver screen. The projectionist union demanded two projectionists in a booth for 3-D shows, 3 if the magnetic stereo soundtrack was involved. Theater owners fought that, too. The end result was many shoddy presentations which left patron sick. Audiences began avoiding 3-D movies for this reason.

While all this was going on, 20th Century Fox was developing CinemaScope, a widescreen process that only used a single projector and a special lens. Theater owners, projectionists, and eventually audiences preferred this over the precision of 3-D, so many 3-D movies started getting flat showings only. Universal rolled out one last 3-D movie in 1955, Revenge of the Creature, and that as they say was that.

But not quite. As early as 1957, 3-D movies were being successfully reissued. The first new 3-D movie after Revenge of the Creature was also the first one released in 3-D and CinemaScope: September Storm in 1960. September Storm became the last dual strip 3-D movie. The following year, The Mask became the first of the part 3-D releases, with 3 segments in anaglyphic 3-D. This was followed by a pair of Nudie Cuties also in part 3-D in 1962, The Bellboy and the Playgirls and Paradiso. A third Nudie Cutie, Adam and Six Eves, was shot in 3-D but released flat until it made a 3-D Blu Ray debut last year courtesy of the 3-D Film Archive and Kino. 3-D took another four years off before returning with 1966's The Bubble, the first single strip polarized 3-D film. Single strip 3-D was supposed to solve the problems of projection. Each image was printed on the same strip of film, either side by side or over and under. They were then projected--again on a silver screen--through a special beam splitter. The whole thing should have been idiot-proof. Never underestimate the idiocy of the American projectionist, however. I've seen far too many single strip presentations that were sometimes painfully mis-projected: the wrong type of screen, the wrong type of beam splitter, the beam splitter not put on correctly, as well as the film being cut incorrectly by the projectionists all could and did wreak havoc on unsuspecting audiences for literally decades.

Nonetheless, The Bubble begat a system that was used for decades. It was followed by Paul Naschy's La Marca del Hombre Lobo in 1968, released in the US in 1971 as Frankenstein's Bloody Terror. 1969 gave us the infamous porn The Stewardesses, which set off a decade of similar films. There were some mainstream films in the 70s, including the part 3-D horror film The Flesh and Blood Show,  the 1974 gorefest Andy Warhol's Frankenstein,  the 1976 South Korean Kaiju flick A*P*E, and a couple of Kung Fu movies. While not everything was mainstream, 3-D was still alive and kicking for practically the whole decade.

3-D took a 3 year break before returning with Comin' At Ya! in 1981. That film started a new mini-boom that lasted until 1985 and produced 18 movies in 3-D. Maybe not as much as the 50s boom, but 3-D was very front and center for a few years in the 80s. Why did it die this time? I suspect projectionists had something to do with it as well as the simple fact that all 18 movies are actually terrible movies. The 50s had some bad films, too, but by and large the 50s batch was pretty good. There wasn't a single good movie released in 3-D from 1981 to 1985. I know because I've seen most of them. I can't imagine that the few I haven't seen are much better than the ones I have.

Six years went between 1985's Starchaser: The Legend of Orin and 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, which was another part 3-D anaglyphic affair. But that's not the full story, either since IMAX 3-D was ramping up starting in the mid-1980s and Disney was having a lot of success with Captain EO at their theme parks. In fact, IMAX 3-D (and porn ironically) carried 3-D through the 90s. And it was an IMAX 3-D release, James Cameron's 2003n Titanic documentary Ghosts of the Abyss, coupled with that same year's part 3-D anaglyphic release of Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over that set the current boom in motion. But even before that there were a few more mainstream releases: a terrible 1995 film called Run For Cover with Adam West in it and a 1997 Charles Band horror comedy called The Creeps. Plus there were 3-D made for video horror films in the late 90s like the atrocious Camp Blood. To say nothing of all the theme park attractions in 3-D like T2 3D: Battle Across Time, Shrek 4-D, MuppetVision 3-D, etc.

Ever since Spy Kids 3-D, there hasn't been a year without 3-D movies. Part of the longevity now seems to be the fact that projection is finally Projectionist-proof. Outside of forgetting to turn the 3-D filter for the projector on (I've seen this happen), there's no way the image can be screwed up nowadays. It also helps that there's much better movies being made nowadays as opposed to the batch from the 60s through the 90s. While there's definitely been some stinkers in the past 17 years, there's been plenty of movies like Hugo, Gravity, Life of Pi, the various Marvel and Star Wars movies, etc. that can stand alongside the classics of the 50s. The circular polarized glasses are better, too. More comfortable and you can tilt your head without losing the effect. Of course, Hollywood did itself no favors with some lousy rushed conversions like Clash of the Titans, but now even the conversions look great. Watching The Force Awakens or The Walk, you'd hardly believe they weren't actually shot in 3-D.

Yes, there's not as many 3-D movies as there were 7 or 8 years ago, but there's still some high profile releases. Yes, TV manufacturers stopped making 3-D TVS, but you can still get 3-D projectors for the home. Frankly, bigger is better with 3-D anyhow. There's a huge difference between seeing The Force Awakens in 3-D on a 50 inch TV screen and seeing it on a 100 inch projection screen. And while it is also true that not as many 3-D Blu Rays are being released in America, you can still get many of the big releases from Europe. I've gotten the last half dozen Marvel movies and the last 3 Star Wars movies all from the UK on 3-D Blu Ray, and all region free. On top of that, the 3-D Film Archive is still releasing several titles a year on 3-D Blu Ray. Taza, Son of Cochise will be out from the 3DFA and Kino later this month. And unless Covid-19 kills movie theaters totally forever, there are some high profile releases coming this fall like Black Widow and Wonder Woman 1984.

So no, 3-D is not totally dead. And it really hasn't been totally dead for nearly 70 years. Even when it goes away, it only goes away for a few years before poking back up in some fashion. The longest gap between movies since the 50s has been five, and that was right after Revenge of the Creature. All the other gaps have been an average of 3-4 years. So I have to say it: 3-D, like the Force, will be with us always.

Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

True confessions of a movie junkie: back when I was a teenager, I had an internship at a neighborhood newspaper. I was given a pass to go review Jaws: The Revenge and I was so excited about the prospect, I gave the movie a good review. Looking back, I am likely the only person in the world to have done so. Consider this post me righting a grievous wrong.

Most people who review Jaws The Revenge on their blogs nowadays seem to do so to prove they are intellectually superior to it. The problem is that proving you're intellectually superior to a movie this dumb is like proving you were born with a torso. Even someone with a zero IQ is intellectually superior to Jaws: The Revenge.

The movie starts with yet another Great White Shark invading the waters of Amity Island. It's Christmas time, so there's no swimmers which makes me wonder why the shark would even bother. Oh, that's right: because the Brody family still lives on Amity Island and youngest son Sean is a deputy. Deputy Sean is sent out on the water to move some driftwood and Mr. Whitey pops out of the water to say "Hello, my name is Sharkey Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!" He then eats Sean, an ignoble end to a character who was always kinda treated shoddily in this series and yet who somehow went from being 5 years old in 1975 to 30 just 12 years later.

Oldest son Michael (Lance Guest) convinces mom Ellen (Lorraine Gary, reprising her role from the first two films) to come and stay in Bermuda with him, his wife and his daughter. The weather's better and there's no sharks. She agrees, so Mr. Whitey decides to follow her to Bermuda because he has more Brody family members to kill, you see. Yes, the shark is actually exacting revenge on the family for the death of the first shark in the original movie. I promise you I did not make that up and I am quite sober. In the novelization, the shark is an instrument of vengeance for a voodoo witch doctor who is pissed at Michael. That almost makes sense, unlike what we actually get.

Ellen meets roguish pilot Hoagie--Michael Caine proving he was willing to do anything for money--and is having a good time unaware that Mr. Whitey has arrived. Michael and his partner Jake (Mario Van Peebles) are aware of Mr. Whitey since he's already tried taking a bite out of Michael. Rather than worry Mom, they decide to try to track the shark. Eventually Mr. Whitey tries taking a bite out of Mike's precocious daughter (Judith Barsi), so Ellen steals Michael's boat and goes out on the ocean to do something, but I'm not sure exactly what. I don't think the writers knew what she was supposed to do either. Certainly she didn't know what she was supposed to do. Michael, Hoagie, and Jake go to the rescue. Hoagie swims but stays dry, Jake falls into the shark's mouth and survives, and the shark eventually roars before exploding once it's impaled. How a shark roars then explodes upon being impaled, I don't know.

If I've made the movie sound more entertaining than it actually is, I apologize. It's a bad habit of mine and I really should break it.

The problems with this movie would likely fill a book. For one, it decides to ignore Jaws 3-D (1983). As bad as Jaws 3-D is--and I fully recognize it's a terrible movie even though I love it--Jaws 3-D almost makes some sort of sense. This film is pure nonsense. On top of that, the acting is bad, the dialogue worse, and the shark looks ridiculous. There isn't even a good kill count in the film as only three people get attacked and one of them survives for reasons that make no sense. There's also an awful lot of time spent on the romance between Ellen and Hoagie. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it's actually a portrayal of an older couple falling in love, something surprising for a movie of this genre. However, there's also a lot of time spent on Michael being jealous and suspicious of Hoagie that drags the thing down.  In short, the main plot is stupid and the subplots are boring. Sure, there's some unintentional laughs in the thing but there's an equally large number of cringe-inducing scenes.

Exactly why I liked this film at 16 is something I'll never know. Especially when I had the common sense to hate equally bad movies. Maybe just because it was a Jaws movie and the original is one of my all time favorite movies. At any rate, if you read my review in 1987, I apologize. And for those of you thinking this thing can't possibly be as bad as I'm now saying...it is.